My Feeling
The rain had been incessantly falling down for a while during the dying afternoon. The sky was dark. The diminutive houses were dark. The birds were hastening to hide inside leaky but cozy wooden porches. Everything was seemingly covered with an irrational sensation of melancholy and sadness. The road was somehow hurt by continuous and heartless flows of heavy rain droplets that showered the whole village with an unpleasant chilliness. They lightly and noiselessly flew into my shivering feet and permeated through my skin under this fragile eave where I was sheltering with my best friend, Alice. Alice, a high school girl at the same age with me, was sitting leisurely on the concrete bench. Even when she was not energetic as usual, her face still looked stunning with that vigorous brown eyes, that naturally pink lip, and that oval face, which could warm the coldest days and brighten my face even when I was depressed and virtually unable to break into a smile.
We silently and impatiently looked at the whole village being dampened with a mournful grayness. The silence between us rendered the rain somehow unbearable to the extent that I thought it had been raining for years. The rain seemed to have penetrated through everything, from the bottom of the ground to the darkest harbour of my feelings, making it a lifeless marsh of wild bushes and unlovely flowers.
“Hahhh. It’s cold,” I whispered, my face hilariously twisted and my head constantly shaking with an apparent displeasure.
Alice, gazing at my miserable state, grinned straight to my face to make fun of me but then said with a sudden worry in her tone, “Haizzz! How can we get out of there? It has rained for a while and now I start to feel hungry. Are you hungry, James?”.
“Yes, I am hungry. If I’d known about this rain, I would have brought a raincoat with me. If we biked a little faster, then we wouldn’t have to stay there,” I quickly responded with an animated voice trying to cheer her up.
“Don’t lie to me, James. You never watch weather broadcasting, do you? And what you just said is merely a conditional statement, not reality. By the way, if I fancy, I wish we could be in a decent restaurant and eat now. That would be great,” she said in a humorously contemptuous voice that soothingly echoed in the air.
Then we laughed, laughed and laughed freely at the moment that I wished could last forever. No sorrow, no worry, we just naively enjoyed an endless laughter of student humor and tricks, not having to contemplate about our ‘tomorrow’ and what we end up being like. But life never goes as expected and always acts in a troublesome way that makes people miserable so that they can value their past and sometimes be lost in their ambiguous recollection, and then sensations of nostalgia and depression seize their minds and daunt them.
That is a nice fragment of memory to remember and to recall. Since the day I left out of her life, I am often obsessed with our together experiences. Since that day, I am no longer my true self. Since that day, I am no longer a humble and talkative student. Since that day, I, from an energetic and enthusiastic person, turn into a taciturn and lifeless introvert that seems to have been deprived of smile. Sometimes, I wake up, having tears falling down without my awareness. Sitting in detachment in the rented room, without any living spirit except myself, I am struggling in a turmoil of emotions. I’m sad. It is obvious. I’m struggling. She is not here to share with. I’m cruel. I am sorry because I have made you, an emotional and vulnerable girl, heartbroken.
It was getting more and more complicated, a bunch of things puzzling my head since she, to my surprise, asked for a date in that leaky and flimsy eave on another rainy day later. As a result, I was in a complete loss and a feeling of bewilderment arose in me. I didn’t know how to answer. It was so unexpected. It never occurred to me that one day, the girl, who I secretly loved, asked me for a date. Recognizing my apparent amazement, she smiled, a usual enchanting smile and then, still sitting on that memorable concrete bench, we fell into silence and together looked at the heavy rain and a few people hurrying to get home in watery plastic raincoats. Up till now, I still wonder why she did that. It was so incomprehensible of her. With her invigorating eyes and her loving personalities, she easily made many boys of my age fall head over heel with her and I, an ordinary student, did not deserve her love. In reality, she just broke up with a well-built and good-looking boy who I still remember sometimes beat me for no reason. A few days later, I still didn’t give any response. Because I didn't like her? No! Because the paradoxical circumstance I was in at that time when I was about to move to a completely exotic city to continue my study, far away from my tiny home countryside. Inside my mind, I was afraid of being unable to protect her and to take care of her. I worried about her pain that I couldn’t share with and take it my burden. I was confused, so confused that I was literally soulless and did not feel like doing anything for weeks. She knew it. She knew about my imminent moving. We met. We laughed it off, but inside we were hurting ourselves. Then we tried to spend the time together as much as possible.
Nonetheless, the time was still on-going and there I was at the airport where limitless people were on the move and where the isolation started to sneak into my heart, make it home and never fade away. There she was, looking straight at me, silently, her eyes appearing puffy and somehow the teardrops still visible on her face.
“Don’t forget me, James,” she sobbed and we hugged as if we would never meet again.
I wished I could hold her forever so that I could save her heart from bleeding terribly. Then, we departed but that vivid image has somehow instilled in my heart till these days.
Life changes, people change. Since that unforgettable day, I turn myself into a completely different person. I am cold most of the time and never feel like happiness. Maybe, it’s gone and she’s gone, too. I speak less with people and become somewhat antisocial. James the Deaf or James the Blind is what they call me, not because I am literally unable to hear or see, but because it is my inclination to fall on deaf ears. Memories blind my sight, create an invisible room that imprisons me with pain and hopelessness. I isolate myself to my internal world where her images are still alive and where film tapes of old memories are repeatedly played. My face is at times emotionless and even when my new friends try hard to tease me, it hardly changes its ubiquitous expression of insensitivity.
I admit that I was positively overwhelmed by the splendour and magnificence of the high school where excellent students gather together. They looked so refined and energetic that the difference between me and them is even more significantly manifest. Sadly I appeared esoteric and unusual to them and it hurt me whenever the image of my old friends and old school was envisioned in my mind. However, something strange happened. An unexpected reconnection of my internal world and the school happened with the appearance of Sophia, my classmate. I was strangely struck by that girl who was exceptionally friendly to me. Possibly recognizing my timidity and bewilderment, she aided me in studying and adapting to the unfamiliar environment.
It was just like a tolerable fantasy in which some elements of life in me was awakened and resuscitated. Nevertheless, I felt somewhat trapped, not because of the academic curriculum but because of her. She reminded me of someone, someone who used to soothe my anxiety and brighten my old days. Granted with lovely reddish cheeks and telltale eyes, Sophia was physically quite different from the girl I would like to meet, yet their personalities matched up the same. “Don’t lie to me. I know you,” she chirped, her eyes seemingly explaining any question or mystery that anyone would seek for. She was quite active in teaching me how to be a “good friend”. Holding my hand, we walked on the well-constructed asphalted road that ended in the blue sea and laughed in a series of funny stories. I know I was quite wrong in doing this. I shouldn’t do that but I couldn’t help it. I don’t know. But, day by day, we grew more interest in each other, yet an irrational expression of sadness never seemed to fade on my face, which puzzled her at times, but she never asked about it and remained silent.
Time quickly passed and it was the near end of the school year. One day, after school, I asked her to go to the beach for gossiping and she delightfully accepted. The road in the meantime was packed with hundreds of students overflowing out of schools, their piercing voices stirring the whole atmosphere with hustle and bustle. Lightly ambling for a few minutes, we finally put our foot on the white sand of the seashore where human agitation seemed to be defeated by the harmonious and pleasing sound of the tidal waves that incessantly threw themselves into the shore. It was getting darker and the glimmering sunbeams were hiding themselves behind the light gray clouds. The winds pleasantly slapped into our face and brought about a sense of tranquility and peace.
Sitting down and freely extending our legs in a recumbent manner, we turned our sight toward the lofty yellow-coloured moon that was becoming more shiny as the darkness was about to dominate over the dying sunlights.
“Will you miss me, James?”, she suddenly asked, her vivacious face turning to a sober one.
“I will, very much. But we will meet again, after the summer break. So don’t worry much about it. I’ll be there,” I quickly and calmly responded, trying to pacify her who seemed so distraught and frantic under that serene face.
All at once, she turned straight to me and said in a somewhat somber tone, “How do you know we would ever meet again? How do you know..?”, some teardrops seemingly lingering under her eyes.
Puzzled by her hidden implication and her bizzare cry, I questioned in an unusually serious way, “What do you mean?”
“I won’t be, James. My family is moving to another place. Forgive me, James! Forgive me!”, she cried.
Knowing that she was not able to stay calm anymore, I held her tiny head in my shoulder and pacified her though my words almost turned into a desperate cry, “I..I..’ll be there for you if you’d ever need me. I..will miss you much. Keep our memories inside. Don’t forget me!”
Then we turned into a complete state of silence, contemplating at the lonely moon and listening to the thunder-like tidal waves that appeared to be the reflection of our hearts now, shattered and broken.
After all, they both walked away and left out of my life. Sometimes, I don’t know whether they are the same person or not and whether the latter is a mere shadowy image of the former. Yesterday, I heard something cracked whose sound echoed from somewhere outside the window. No, it was pleasantly tickling and clicking like a disordered harmony of sounds that were booming in the middle of the night. I knew it that someone was crying miserably there. She seemed to be crushing something soft in her hand, something poignant but unfortunately twisting her and making her broke inside. That thing looked like my heart and my love. They were both crushed, ripped apart and scattered. Now, I am sitting listlessly and gazing out of the barred window. The darkness of the night is becoming stronger and the sparkles of afternoon sunlight almost vanish. But wait! Someone is down there. Someone is looking at me. That’s her. She is smiling at me. That face still hasn’t changed for over one year. And there we looked at each other for awhile until the night comes and took her away...
